{L@ & -- --- @ Il ( 150 IF YOU KNO'fJ SOMEONE IN THE BUSINESS) o . (though a few evangels were caught with their pants down) and from anti-por- nography feminists. The weakening, in- flationary economy dampened the mood. Sexual liberation began to feel rotten from within. Larry Flynt's Hustler ran photos of naked prepubescents and a regular comic strip called "Chester the Molester." Linda Lovelace, the child- faced heroine of the first great porn hit, "Deep Throat," revealed in a 1980 auto- biography that she had been beaten and threatened WIth a gun by her husband to compel her compliance while making indecent films. The law began to stir . " D Th ", h h agaIn: eep roat s ero, t e meg- aphallic Harry Reems, was arrested in his New York City apartment and ex- tradited to Tennessee, where, in 1976, a Memphis jury found him and eleven other defendants guilty of obscenity. (The conviction was later overturned.) In 1974, the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a San Diego publisher, William Hamling, who had brought out an edition, with hard-core illustrations, of the report of the Presidential Com- mission on Obscenity and Pornographr If the Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade deci- sion, legalizing abortion, was, as Allyn writes, "the crowning achievement of the sexual revolution," the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment, which ran out of time in 1982, with only three more states needed for ratification, was the legal triumph of the counter- revolution, led in this instance by Phyllis ScWafly, who claImed that the amend- ment would "destroy the family, foster C\ E40'k. 'ý . homosexuality, and hurt women." So, even without the emergence of herpes and AIDS, "by the early eighties, the sex- ual revolution was out of steam." David Allyn likes the image of run- ning out of steam enough to use it at least three times. While one must admire the wealth of detail and documented anecdote that fuels his steamy narrative, there is something mechanical about his take on this, after all, intimate and flesWy change. The live creature within the ex- oskeleton of headlines and commu- niqués remains elusive. Allyn's skirmish- by-skirmish military approach does best with those movements within the revo- lution which led a minority-gay men, lesbians-to achieve, through organiza- tion, alliance, pronouncement, and con- frontation, some public acknowledgment of its equal rights. The battle for legal recognition of same-sex couples, with all the benefits society bestows on hetero- sexual couples, still goes on, but anyone alive in the forties and fifties, when ho- mosexuals of either gender were objects of coarse fun and frank abhorrence, will see at century's end an improved, relatively accepting situation, however marred by incidents of gay-bashing. For the heterosexual mainstream, the main news is that the sky did not fall in. Huge Technicolor genitals appeared on movie screens, Henry Miller's "Tropics" novels freely circulated, young couples took to living in what used to be called "sin," polymorphous perversity was preached and practiced, and yet the soci- ety continued to function, and people in Enjo holl hocks, not gndlock. Move to fearríngton, a víl1age just south ot Chapel Híll, NC Retíre to the Southern part ot Heaven. Sínce 1975 over 1200 tolks have chosen to líve amidst bluebírds, holl hocks. and ínterestíng neíghbors ot all ages. Our homes and townhouses offer attractíve optíons tor actíve retírees. The torthcomlng Duke Center tor Llvmgw,1I offer extensíve lítest le and wellness programs. The complete stor ís on ourweb síte, or call us tor more Intormatlon. 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